Any good implementation of Actors for C#? [closed]

Answer 1

You should have a look at MS Concurrency & Coordination Runtime (CCR), and the Decentralized Software Services (DSS), part of Robotic Studio.

These frameworks would allow you develop loosely coupled services that fulfill most of the actor-approach requirements.

Axum would be the best fit, unfortunately it's still in some sort of alpha/beta phase (UPDATE it has been killed in Feb. 2011). I use it for my research and must say that the general direction is great and it has enormous potential.

Not C# but C++ is Microsoft's Asynchronous Agents Library which gives you all the features that you need.

Have a good look at Parallel related features of .NET 4.

Hope it helps!

Answer 2

Today Microsoft announced Azure Service Fabric which according to this picture, implements an actor programming model:

See the announcement: http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2015/04/20/announcing-azure-service-fabric-reducing-complexity-in-a-hyper-scale-world/

Update: The SDK is now available and there's a video tutorial as well.

Answer 3

As already mentioned, F#'s MailboxProcessor class offers a simple, straightforward implementation of the actor model. A fantastic introduction on how to use it is available here. F# interoperates with C# very well and you can wrap up the agent in a class with methods which post different messages. For the cases where the agent will reply with an asynchronous response, see the PostAndAsyncReply method. This returns an Async workflow which you can turn into a task that can be awaited in C# using the Async.StartAsTask method.

Finally, if you need to distribute your actors remotely, I recommend you check out Akka.NET which offers both C# and F# APIs.

Answer 4

I don't know of any implementations for C#, but there's a whole new programming language based on the Actor model by Microsoft. It's called Axum:

Axum (previously codenamed Maestro) is a domain specific concurrent programming language, based on the Actor model, being developed by Microsoft. It is an object-oriented language based on the .NET Common Language Runtime using a C-like syntax which, being a domain-specific language, is intended for development of portions of a software application that is well-suited to concurrency. But it contains enough general-purpose constructs that one need not switch to a general-purpose programming language (like C#) for the sequential parts of the concurrent components.

Answer 5

Stact

An actor-lib on .Net. Quite competent and well tested. The foundation of TopShelf, MassTransit and NServiceBus.Host.

https://github.com/phatboyg/stact

Contains the abstractions:

• Workflow, allowing complex state-driven protocols to be defined and executed
• Channels, to support message passing between objects
• Actors, both typed and anonymous
• Fibers, a cooperative threading model
• Routing
• Request/Reply
• Schedulers

Upcoming:

• Proper supervisor hierarchies

Being actively developed at the time of writing by Chris.

Overview:

Developing concurrent applications requires an approach that departs from current software development methods, an approach that emphasizes concurrency and communication between autonomous system components. The actor model defines a system of software components called actors that interact with each other by exchanging messages (instead of calling methods on interfaces in an object-oriented design), producing a system in which data (instead of control) flows through components to meet the functional requirements of the system.

Stact is a library for building applications using the actor model in .NET. The main assembly, Stact.dll, is the actor library and includes everything needed to use the actor model in any type of application. There are also additional supporting frameworks, such as Stact.ServerFramework, that can be used to expose actors via sockets or HTTP, allowing services to be built using actors.

Answer 6

You should also consider PostSharp Actors